A little bit of everything and a lot of nothing: images and stories to take us on an eclectic journey. . . . . . CLICK ON THE HEADING FOR THE "SOURCE" OF THE ARTICLE AND CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR PHOTOGRAPHER. CLICK ON IMAGES FOR A LARGER VERSION.

Friday, December 26, 2014

A skyline-altering retail, residential and hotel complex with three
high-rise towers in the bustling South Park neighborhood in downtown Los
Angeles is finally moving forward.

Chinese developer Oceanwide
Real Estate Group began leveling several structures this month on a
sprawling parking lot across from Staples Center on Figueroa Street,
paving the way for an early 2015 groundbreaking. The demolition ends
years of inactivity at the 4.6-acre lot — long envisioned as the
shopping section of the L.A. Live entertainment complex.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Work has begun on another large-scale housing and retail project in South Park, a booming neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles east of Staples Center.

Olive & Pico, as the $54-million complex will be known, is under construction on the block surrounded by Pico Boulevard and Olive, 12th and Margo streets.

The seven-story complex being developed by the Wolff Co. of Scottsdale, Ariz., will have 293 apartments over street-level shops and restaurants. It was designed by TCA Architects and should be completed by mid-2016.

Monday, May 12, 2014

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple's ring-shaped, gleaming "Spaceship Headquarters" will include a world class auditorium and an orchard for engineers to wander. Google's new Bay View campus will feature walkways angled to force accidental encounters. Facebook, while putting final touches on a Disney-inspired campus including a Main Street with a barbecue shack, sushi house and bike shop, is already planning an even larger, more exciting new campus.

More than ever before, Silicon Valley firms want their workers at work.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has gone so far as to ban working from home, and many more offer prodigious incentives for coming in to the office, such as free meals, massages and gyms.

This spring, as the tech industry is soaring out of the Great Recession, plans are in the works for a flurry of massive, perk-laden headquarters.

"We're seeing the mature technology companies trying to energize their work environments, getting rid of cube farms and investing in facilities to compete for talent," said Kevin Schaeffer, a principal at architecture and design firm Gensler in San Jose. "That's caused a huge transition in the way offices are laid out."

New Silicon Valley headquarters or expansions are under way at most of the area's major firms, including eBay, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia and Oracle. Many will be huge: Apple Inc.'s 176-acre campus will be one of the world's largest workplaces. On the outside, many of the new buildings boast striking architectural designs and will collectively be among the most environmentally friendly in the country. Inside, there are walls you can draw on, ping pong tables, Lego stations, gaming arcades and free haircuts.
Critics say that while some workplace perks and benefits are a good thing, the large, multibillion dollar corporate headquarters are colossal wastes of money that snub the pioneering technology these firms actually create.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

People throw colored powders in the air during celebrations for the Holi Festival of Color in Barcelona, Spain, on April 6. The festival is fashioned after the Hindu spring festival Holi, which is mainly celebrated in the north and east of India.

Friday, March 21, 2014

A striking new hotel under construction on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood will be a swanky outpost of the James, an upscale boutique brand in major urban centers.
The 286-room hotel
at the southeast corner of Sunset and La Cienega boulevards is part of a
$300-million complex under construction at the intersection. The
development, known as Sunset La Cienega, will also have apartments,
shops and restaurants.

Opened in Bombay in 1887 on the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's
ascension, the Victoria Terminus train station was an over-the top
Gothic statement about the supremacy of the British Empire. That ended
soon enough, but the station, now known as the Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus, is still a landmark in the city, itself renamed Mumbai. Many
Americans have been in it, at least via film: The climax of 2008's Best
Picture, Slumdog Millionaire, was filmed here.

By the time of his death, William Pereira had over 400 projects to his name. Among the structures he designed throughout Southern California were CBS Television City, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, and the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. He is also responsible for creating the monumental Spanish-inspired facades that defined Robinson's
department stores for nearly 20 years, and he was the architect of
Pepperdine University at Malibu, named by the "Princeton Review" as the
most beautiful college campus in America. Out of his immense body of
work, three have really stood out in the public mind: the master-planned
cities of Irvine and Newport Beach, and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (shown above).

It
was in this rough-and-tumble town of Spaniards, Mexicans, Indians,
Europeans, Easterners, and Midwesterners— this pueblo of aspiration and
of experiment—that USC got its start with 53 students taught by 10
faculty. They gathered in a two-story building perched on a donated
parcel of land that the Los Angeles Daily Herald
unenthusiastically described as “covered with a rank growth of
mustard.” In those early days the school had no electricity, and
students tended wood-burning stoves to earn part of their tuition.
Transportation to the university was provided by horse-drawn rigs,
including a horse-drawn streetcar that operated on a line established
by USC’s principal founder, Robert Maclay Widney. Students had to
follow specific rules of conduct that forbade them from leaving town
without the permission of the university president, wearing firearms in
their classes, and shooting jackrabbits from the platform of the
streetcar.

Oriental DreamWorks is developing the Dream Center, an integrated tourism destination in Shanghai that will open in 2016.

The Dream Center, to be located in Zuhui Riverside, will include theaters, restaurants, tourist attractions, cinemas, waterfront hotels,
galleries, studios and other commercial facilities. The visionaries
plan to create an "Oriental paradise for all dream seekers." That could
explain the proposed “Dream Walk”, the world’s largest IMAX theatre to
be used for film premieres.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

WASHINGTON — As international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
stall, schemes to slow global warming using fantastical technologies
once dismissed as a sideshow are getting serious consideration in
Washington.

Ships that spew salt into the air to block sunlight.
Mirrored satellites designed to bounce solar rays back into space.
Massive "reverse" power plants that would suck carbon from the
atmosphere. These are among the ideas the National Academy of Sciences
has charged a panel of some of the nation's top climate thinkers to
investigate. Several agencies requested the inquiry, including the CIA.

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, scientists are modeling what such technologies might do to weather patterns. At the Pacific NorthwestNational Laboratory in Richland, Wash., a fund created by Microsoft founder Bill Gates — an enthusiast of research into climate engineering — helps bankroll another such effort.

"There is a level of
seriousness about these strategies that didn't exist a decade ago, when
it was considered just a game," said Ken Caldeira, a scientist with the
Carnegie Institution at Stanford University, who sits on the National Academy of Sciences panel. "Attitudes have changed dramatically."
Even as the research moves forward, many scientists and government officials worry about the risks of massive climate-control contraptions.

This rendering above shows a cloud-brightening scheme by scientist John Latham
in which a ship sprays salt particles into the air to reflect sunlight
and slow global warming.
(John MacNeil)

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Built in 1971 ,
Azadi tower is the symbol of Tehran with a height of 45 meters. the
design of the building is s derivation of ancient Islamic architecture. Despite State Department warning, the U.S. does not block travel to Iran.https://www.google.com/search?q=azadi+tower&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&hs=F4Y&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=44ANU4PrKIbZoATwu4LQCQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1120&bih=722#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=bVlIii1KYSJouM%253A%3BIboPO6E4_EJy-M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.nadiatour.com%252Fuploads%252FAZADITOWER.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.nadiatour.com%252Firan-highlights%252FTehran%252F1002%252Fview%252F%3B1024%3B768

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia is now the world's
largest sanctuary for manta rays, after officials were persuaded by
evidence that the gentle giants known for delighting tourists are worth
more alive than dead.

The government on Friday announced that
manta rays within the archipelago's 5.8 million square kilometers (2.2
million square miles) of ocean will be protected from fishing and
export. It will take time and cooperation at multiple levels to enforce
the ban on poaching in the biggest global shark and ray fishery

Some folks of failing memories or tender years may ask this question,
but many of us still remember. We remember that in 1976, while our
nation was still writhing from the agonies of the Vietnam War disaster
and our mega corporations were launching themselves upon the global
scene, a strange phenomenon appeared in our neighborhoods. People were
going around screaming

I'm mad as hell and I'm not

going to take it anymore!

What happened?

The 1976 Oscar-winning movie NETWORK is what happened.

NETWORK was a biting, hilarious, prophetic satire of empty minded
entertainment mills masquerading as news programs chaired by
pontificating talking heads, a biting indictment of an America
heedlessly, destructively rushing to global dominance, recklessly driven
by a totally out of control financial sector that

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

With 52 floors, Two California Plaza is one of the tallest buildings in downtown Los Angeles. It has been acquired by Hollywood developer CIM Group.
(Jay L. Clendenin, Los Angeles Times / February 13, 2014)

When IDS Realty put the long stalled Metropolis development on the
market earlier this year, they commissioned a series of renderings
showing the approximate size and scope of the project's full build out.
The 6.3 acre site is entitled for a total of 1.65 million square feet
of hotel, residential, office and retail uses divided between five
towers. The completed development would include roughly 400,000 square
feet of office space
and up to 1,676 hotel rooms. Entitlements also allow for some of those
hotel rooms to be replaced with as many as 555 residential units. The
towers could stand as tall as 456-feet above grade.

The development of the A-12 was troubled by cost overruns and several
delays, causing questions of the program's ability to deliver upon its
objectives; these doubts led to the development program
being canceled in 1991. The manner of its cancellation was contested
through litigation until a settlement was reached in January 2014.

The manner in which the program was canceled led to years of litigation between the contractors and the Department of Defense over breach of contract. On 1 June 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
ruled that the U.S. Navy was justified in canceling the contract. The
ruling also required the two contractors to repay the U.S. government
more than US$1.35 billion, plus interest charges of US$1.45 billion. Boeing, which had merged with McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics vowed to appeal the ruling.
In September 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear the two
companies' arguments, that the government canceled the project
improperly and that the use of a state secrets claim by the U.S.
prevented them from mounting an effective defense. In May 2011, the Supreme Court set aside the Appeals Court decision and returned the case to federal circuit court. In January 2014, the case was settled with Boeing and General Dynamics agreeing to pay $200 million each to the U.S. Navy.

NEW YORK Ã¢â‚¬â€œ April 20, 2011 Ã¢â‚¬â€œ The name Porsche has been associated with pioneering automotive engineering innovations since the beginning of the last century. In 1900 Prof. Ferdinand Porsche
unveiled his Lohner Porsche, an electric car with wheel-hub motors
driving the front wheels. Soon after, this car featured all-wheel drive
and four-wheel brakes, another world first. A highlight of his early
years as an automotive designer was the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus that
went down in history 111 years ago as the first functional hybrid car.

Wednesday, February 05, 2014

SAN MARINO (CNS) – The
Huntington Library has purchased the extensive photographic collection
of Ernest Marquez, a descendant of Mexican land grantees who owned what
became known as Santa Monica and Rustic canyons and parts of Pacific
Palisades, it was reported today.

Amassed over 50 years, the 4,600-image compilation includes rare photos of 1870s Santa Monica and Los Angeles.

“The group of photographs is the best and most comprehensive
collection of its kind in private hands,” Jennifer A. Watts, curator of
photographs at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, told the Los Angeles Times.

She declined to reveal the price but said this was the Huntington’s
costliest purchase of photographs since the days of Henry E. Huntington.

WELLESLEY, Mass. (AP) — A remarkably lifelike sculpture of a man
sleepwalking in nothing but his underpants has made some Wellesley College students a bit uncomfortable, but the president of the prestigious women’s school says that’s all part of the intellectual process.

The sculpture entitled “Sleepwalker” of a man in an eyes-closed,
zombie-like trance is part of an exhibit by sculptor Tony Matelli at the
college’s Davis Museum. It was placed at a busy area of campus on
Monday, a few days before the official opening of the exhibit, and
prompted an online student petition to have it removed.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Satan
might be sitting at the Oklahoma Statehouse if a purported satanic group
gets its way. The Satanic Temple submitted plans for a "Satan Statue" to be erected in the wake of new state laws that paved the way for a 10 Commandments monument.

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

ROME — In a verdant
valley east of Rome, Fabrizio Baldi admires a forgotten stretch of a
two-tier Roman aqueduct, a stunning example of the emperor Hadrian's 2nd
century drive to divert water from rural springs to his ever-thirstier capital.

But Baldi, 36, is less
interested in the graceful arches than in where the aqueduct's span
ends, hidden in a wooded slope across a stream, halfway up the side of
the valley. Scrambling through thick brambles, he comes across a large
hole in the ground that appears to be the start of a tunnel. "This is where the water poured off the aqueduct and started a 21-mile underground journey to Rome."

Baldi is one of about 80
amateur speleologists who spend their weekends crawling down underground
channels with laser scanners and GPS in an effort to conclusively map
the city's network of 11 ancient aqueducts for the first time in modern
history. In doing so, they have turned up underground stretches that
nobody remembered.

Supersonic passenger travel was stopped when Air France and British Airways cancelled their transatlantic Concorde service, however the Aerion Supersonic Business
Jet aims to change this, with the impressive ability to carry up to 12
passengers and able to travel at speeds of up to mach 1.5 for more than
4,000 miles. The jet is currently undergoing extensive testing to reach
this perfection before its grand unveiling.

Making it possible to travel from Paris to New York in four hours and
fourteen minutes, this supersonic jet is causing great excitement
amongst travellers and jet lovers across the globe.

About Me

Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you will find it interesting. "This and That and More of the Same" strives to show images that are striking along with intriguing human interest stories. The "Memories" blog displays images of family while "Why Ask For the Moon When We Have the Stars" is devoted to friends.